Monday, July 28, 2008

A Market for my Honey

In the local health-food shop today I noticed they didn't have any local honey. They said their usual supplier had lost all his colonies to a virus. I asked if that meant they were looking for a new supplier. "Oh yes," they said, "Do you know anyone?", "Well, it just so happens..."

So now I urgently need to get labels printed and buy some new jars of the proper size. And, of course, encourage the bees to make more honey. When we checked them on Sunday morning they still hadn't begun to draw out the frames of foundation that we put on when we took the honey over a week ago, much less start to fill them with honey. It's a bit of a mystery.

We put a second brood box on top of the first one to give the queen more space to lay eggs. We want to build up a really strong colony so we can divide it and have two strong colonies by the time winter comes. And we gave them back the drained frames we took the honey from. They should lick those clean, repair them, and start to fill them with honey again. The weather has been great and it's the height of the nectar flow. They should be able to fill a super with honey in a couple of weeks in conditions like this.

If you will email me the details with sketch of what you'd like your label to look like, it would be my pleasure to design the labels for your bee business. You name the size you want from an array of sticky backed label sheets and I'll email you a layout for printing as many as fits a letter size sheet. I appreciate honey growers, its the least I can do. Follow my blog to my graphics business for samples of my work for ideas.

A nasty thought occurred - will you have to have environmental health etc checks on your honey? It might turn out not to be worth the hassle. I still wish you all the very best though - I really do hope it all works out.

Hi I'm a fellow bee keeper new this year, hoping the same, although I've not taken any yet from my swam. Anyway if you don't know already you can get pre-printed labels in all styles and seals from the bee equipment supplier www.thorne.co.uk

Regarding the comment on sales, there's an official Defa/CSL leaflet somewhere, but here's a list of what you have to ensure if you're selling yourshttp://www.wnklba.co.uk/Selling.htm